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and set my eyes on the largest of the French painting posters. In it, mustached men in top hats and women in long skirts inhabited the rainy city along a wide cobblestone street where a horse-drawn carriage seemed to have just casually passed. What struck me was that there was nothing exactly in the center except the open street and a narrow building angled to fit a V-shaped intersection. It all appeared so calm, yet I sensed some kind of underlying tension, the bustle of an ordinary day hiding under the umbrellas of the painting’s inhabitants.
    I felt Everett’s arms wrapping around me from behind. He said softly into my ear, “Kai boat.”
    “What?”
    “Gustave Caillebotte. French Impressionist; actually, sort of a Realist. Big benefactor for Monet and some other impoverished painters.”
    “Your sister likes French art.”
    “She spent a year abroad before dropping out of college altogether. Came back with lots of trendy clothes, tubes full of posters, and a fetus.”
    “What?”
    “The parents were scandalized, of course. They didn’t want a bastard frog ruining her chances of a real marriage, and she didn’t want the little tadpole either.”
    “I don’t really think I need to–”
    “Abortion, le scandale de la famille ,” he hissed with a bad accent. “She’d already refused a debutante ball, and the hairy hands of local boys who probably wanted to inherit Forrestville’s wealth more than her hand in marriage. Ever since then, she’s been the bad kid, leaving me plenty of room to misbehave.”

    “Dude, I don’t think this is any of my–”

    “Oh, don’t worry. She’ll tell her own version of it all before breakfast. Just pretend it’s new gossip.”

    “Okay.”

    “We should go,” he said.

    “Go where?”

    Everett sort of rolled his eyes. “Acquisition? Mary-joo-wanna?”

    “I thought your sister was gonna–”

    “She left the address. It’ll be cool.”

    I wasn’t so sure.

    Having changed into different clothes, a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and boots that disguised any trace of the dashing appearance he’d previously maintained, he appeared to be any average young man, not the shivering horny wood elf or prep school suck-up I’d come to know in those few days. I wasn’t aware of any dress code for making drug deals.

    Why couldn’t we just stay in, knowing his sister wouldn’t be back for hours? What was he trying to prove?

    “Am I okay?” I asked, barely masking my confusion.

    “You’re perfect.” He approached me, offered a light kiss. “Shall we?”

     
    The apartment of the mysterious pot dealer was on a small cramped side street in Lawrenceville, the working-class section on the north side of town. Row houses were stacked along a steep hill like playing cards. For some reason he didn’t explain, Everett suggested I park the Plymouth down the street, and not in the empty driveway of the building which he’d pointed out as our destination.

    “Just stay cool,” Everett said.

    “I am,” I said. I wasn’t.

    “He’ll probably offer to smoke some after we buy. It’s kind of a fake social courtesy.”

    “Is it?” I snapped, silently vowing to refuse any offers before driving again.

    “Testy.” He left the car, closing the door quietly. I followed as he climbed up the porch stairs and knocked on the door. We heard the new Cheap Trick album playing inside. Everett knocked again… and again.
    The inside door opened. Behind the screen door, a very tall man eyed us, wearing a T-shirt and denim vest, and what could only be described as a Yosemite Sam mustache. He could not have more fittingly played the role of the prison-worn drug dealer.

    “And you are?”

    “Holly’s brother? Everett? She called earlier?”

    Yosemite Sam hollered inside, “Holly’s brother?”

    Someone inside shouted consent. Without turning back to look at us, he opened the door.

    The small front room was oddly empty. In what had apparently been a dining room converted