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the gun.
    Malcolm was right handed, so he made himself reach for the gun with his left hand. It felt awkward, heavy. He set it down on the linen shelf, atop the flannel sheets he almost never used. He grabbed the box of shells and put them next to the gun.
    Malcolm told himself to hurry, just to empty the damn thing and get outside, but he knew that then he’d have to find the book.
    And if he couldn’t write them? And what made him think that he could? What made him think that he could have the insight to translate the poetry of a Jesuit nun who had given her life to God. Given her life to sweat in an airless schoolhouse in Guatemala so orphaned children had something better than prostitution and abject poverty for their futures? What made him think he could capture her piety, her terrible sense of gratitude, the breath of the poetry that had reached in and stilled his own breath upon his first reading? How could he communicate all of that in English for clueless Americans? He would surely fail.
    His air conditioner cycled off then, and the house fell as silent as the inside of a tissue box.
    Wouldn’t it just be easier to call it quits now? Wouldn’t it be easier instead of going through the motions, knowing, ultimately, it wouldn’t be any good?
    Malcolm picked up the gun. The safety was set. He almost giggled at the irony. Why should someone like him bother to set it? He fingered the safety, wondering if resolve would come if he released it.
    Just as he was about to, Malcolm felt the bump of Ricardo’s nose against his calf. He looked down at his feet as the cat walked figure-eights between them, purring as though to flatter Malcolm into feeding him.
    “Ah, yes. That’s still on my to-do list, isn’t it?”
    As Malcolm unloaded the gun and set each bullet back in the box, he noted that his sense of calm before Ricardo’s interruption should have been a source of concern.
    “Well, that’s why we’re taking it to the bank, isn’t it?” He said it aloud and then told himself he was crazy.
    Once the gun was unloaded, he didn’t waste any time getting away from the bullets. He slammed the closet door shut and bolted outside with the gun. In the driveway he opened the trunk of this Honda Accord and set down the piece. There in the trunk it looked like something from The Soprano’s , so he took the coil of jumper cables he kept behind a cargo net and dumped them on top of the gun. He closed the trunk and walked back to his front porch.
    It was approaching six, but the sun was just going over the trees, and his street was more sunlight than shadows. A few blocks down St. Patrick, he could see some children on bikes and an old lady walking her dachshund, but no one on his end of the street was outside. A little too late, he hoped none of the neighbors had seen him run outside with a gun in his hand.
    He went back inside and faced the next item on his list: find Sister Alejandro’s book, La Fuente de Piedra. The Stone Fountain. This would not be a difficult task. Most of the books he’d read over the summer were still piled on the daybed in the study.
    The daybed was his favorite spot for reading because it was set facing a wall of three windows that overlooked his backyard. He kept these free of treatments because the trees and ligustrums provided privacy from his backdoor neighbors and the light there was always good—diffused through green leaves almost all year. When Ricardo wasn’t outside, squirrels and mockingbirds bravely gathered at the two feeders on the live oak, and twice a year Malcolm could watch the daily gorgings of three or four red-throated hummingbirds who drank from the feeder he’d set not four feet from the windows.
    Malcolm realized that the hummingbirds would be back in a few weeks. If only he could find his way clear through the translations. The thought of working at his desk—really producing something—or even better, sitting on the daybed with his laptop, looking to the