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on the wall beside the bed, every night, or she’ll never get any sleep and so neither will I.
    I kneel on the mattress and tape them up one by one.
    They’re all houses. Cut or torn from newspapers and magazines.
    And they all have green lawns and bushes or trees.
    Meanwhile, Chloe is like a cat in the dark. She can see in all kinds of blackness. She’s sitting in the tiniest bit of light, a ray of it that washes through the street-side window, from the corner street lamp. She’s drawing something with her markers.
    “Shit,” I say. “We just ran out of tape.”
    She looks up at me, sees I’m holding the very last of her house pictures. Number eleven, I think. A new one. I didn’t even know she had this one. At least, I don’t think I did. It’s hard to see in this light. It’s hard to keep track.
    “Just set that last one up against the wall where I can see it.”
    “You know it’s not going to look like this, right, Chlo? You do know there won’t be trees or grass.” Or a house for that matter.
    We’d be lucky to get a studio.
    “You always say that to me, Jordy.”
    “I know. I just want to make sure you didn’t forget.”
    “We can get more tape tomorrow, right?”
    “This might be a tight week, Chlo.” Like they’re not all.
    “You could lift some.” She’s gone back to her work now. She’s taken up the scissors from our box and she’s cutting the paper into some kind of intricate design.
    “I don’t know if it’s worth going to jail for.”
    “They wouldn’t put you in jail for just tape, would they?”
    “Might. Never can tell. Depends on the mood people are in.”
    “Well, I have to have tape, or I can’t finish this.” But she looks finished. She’s put the markers and the scissors away in our box.
    “What are you making?”
    “It’s for you,” she says. “It’s a crown.” She brings it over to me and holds it in place around my head. But it won’t stay in one piece in the back. Not without tape. She has a point about that.
    “There you have it. King Jordy.”
    “What am I the king of?” I feel tired all of a sudden. Too tired to rule.
    “Well. This. Where we live.”
    I laugh. “All this, huh?”
    “Well, it’s something. And at least you’re the king of it.”
    “No, that’s good, Chlo. You’re right. It’s good to be king of something. I bet you could figure out how to make it stay without tape.”
    I take it off and look. It’s amazingly intricate, in five colors, with cutout paper filigree and a snake weaving in and out. How she does these things, I’ll never know.
    “It’s beautiful, Chlo.” She takes it from me and figures out how to cut a tab and slot with the scissors. I’m impressed. I say, “You know I can only wear it down here in the cellar, though. I can’t wear it on the street.” I figure she’ll ask why not in a second, so I beat her to it. “Because I’m not the king of anything up there.”
    Chloe nods thoughtfully. “Right,” she says. “That’s exactly the point.”
    I set the crown on the corner of our mattress and we go to sleep the way we always do, blankets pulled up to our chins, Chloe draped over my back like she wants to get inside my skin but hasn’t yet managed to get any closer than this.
    In the morning I leave her at Chock full o’Nuts to drink coffee with six sugars. I give her two dollars in case the waitress starts thinking Chloe can’t pay. It doesn’t work to have things like that happening while I’m away.
    “I have to go see Rene,” I say. “So this could take a while. I could even be two hours. You have to wait here the whole time.”
    “Boring,” she says.
    “I know. I’m sorry.” I see a newspaper over on the next table, an empty table with a newspaper someone up and left behind.
    “Here,” I say, and get it for her, and set it on the table in front of her. “You can look for pictures.”
    “Get tape,” she says.
    “Yeah, okay. Don’t go away this time.”
    “Lift it if you have