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band you like.”
    “Oh, yeah, I can see the tip of the drumstick in his hand.”
    “I’ve put a lot of thought into this, Lynn. I used the stats from the talk you and Logan had the other day,” Dani said. “And now maybe you found the real him. The real dream man, I mean.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “maybe.”

Cats and Dogs
    I t took a few days for Hayes to return the mortar and pestle. When he came, I was in the bathroom scrubbing the ring of soap scum off the bathtub, so I didn’t hear the door. Mom never seemed to notice this brown ring of sticky muck, but I got tired of watching it grow each morning. I noticed a dark blob of shadow slide across the tile floor. But when I turned around, no one was there. I took off my rubber kitchen gloves and set them on the edge of the tub.
    First, I noticed the mortar and pestle sitting on Mom’s vanity table. It took me a moment to hear the scraping sound on the other side of the bed. I stepped around to see what was making it, and there was Hayes picking through the carpet on his hands and knees.
    “Hey, dorko,” I shouted, making him jerk up and hit his head on the corner of the dresser, “you drop your brain?”
    “Ha, ha,” Hayes said, rubbing the back of his head. He looked pasty-faced and agitated. “Ha. Say, Little Flipper, I might of mislaid something important here the other day. A white plastic package wrapped in duct tape about yea big?” He stretched out his hands the length of a cat’s tail. “I was hoping maybe … actually, come to think on it, it might could be in a clear Ziploc bag. Anyway, I remember I put it in a safe place and now it’s, well, too safe. But it’s, umm, very—”
    “Important?” I said, enjoying this way too much.
    “Yeah.” He smiled and rocked from heel to toe on his beat-upold cowboy boots, looking very pleased to see I understood. “Very. Man, Flipper, man, I can’t thank you—”
    “Nope.” I edged forward a little. “Haven’t seen anything like that. I would of noticed too.”
    “No, really, no fooling now,” Hayes said, his eyes shiny with something that looked awful close to real tears. “You got to understand. I’m serious as shit here. I mean, this is important. To me. Shit. Fuck. I got to—damn it—”
    “Finish making your pill flour?”
    His eyes darted here and there, scanning the carpet. “If I hadn’t of lost that package, it wouldn’t of needed doing. And now I’m all out of—” He gave me a crafty look, the type he invented when he thought he was getting one over on me. This belief in his own sneakiness appeared to cheer him a good bit.
    “What was that stuff you were making?” I asked.
    Hayes explained the pills were some type of hormones for dogs. Dog relaxers, he called them. All the while, he kept picking up bits of lint, lost buttons, and even an unpopped popcorn kernel, holding them up to the light and then chucking them over his shoulder.
    “So why were you sucking on them? Aren’t you worried you’ll start growing fur and some sort of weird dog muscles?”
    “It’s the easiest way to get the coating off, so I can crush them. If you’re careful, they don’t even get all that wet. You just brush them off with your shirt and then you’re good to go.” Hayes gnawed on his thumb for a second before deciding to pull the dresser out a few inches. This was work that required grunting. Whatever he was looking for, it didn’t seem to be back there. He left the dresser pulled back from the wall and moved on to the vanity.
    It still sounded hinky to me. But I knew Hayes really did breed dogs. Under normal circumstances, that’s about all he wanted to talk about. He trained rat terriers. Mom said he actually fought them against rats.
    “Looky here,” I said, bending over and snatching one of his dog pills off the carpet under the vanity.
    Hayes slid over the bed with both hands out. His eyes got big and hungry. I closed my hand around the pill and stepped back. He made a swipe at