‘What do you want to ask me, D? Keep in mind your mother barely passed Home Economics back in the day.’
‘Well, here’s my problem,’ Derek says. ‘He’s got two of the green ones, Pacific and Pennsylvania, but I got North Carolina. Mr Lockridge says he’ll give me nine hundred dollars for it. That’s three times what I paid, but …’
‘But?’ Corinne says.
‘But?’ Billy says.
‘But then he can put houses on the green ones. And he already has hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk!’
‘So?’ Corinne says.
‘So?’ Billy says. He’s grinning.
‘I gotta go to the bathroom and I’m almost broke anyway,’ Shanice says, and gets up.
‘Honey, you don’t need to announce your bathroom calls. You just need to say excuse me.’
Shanice says, with that same winning dignity, ‘I’m going to powder my nose, okay?’
Billy bursts out laughing. Corinne joins him. Derek pays no attention. He studies the board, then looks up at his mother. ‘Sell or not? I’m almost out of money!’
‘It’s a Hobson’s choice,’ Billy says. ‘That means you have to decide between taking a chance or standing pat. Between you and me, D, I think you’re kinda sunk either way.’
‘Think he’s right, hon,’ Corinne says.
‘He’s really lucky,’ Derek says to his mother. ‘He landed on Free Parking and got all the money in there and it was a bundle.’
‘Also I’m really good,’ Billy says. ‘Admit it.’
Derek tries to scowl, but can’t manage it for a long time. He holds up the deed with the green stripe. ‘Twelve hundred.’
‘Done!’ Billy cries, and hands over the cash.
Twenty minutes later the children are bankrupt and the game is over. When Billy stands up, his knees crack and the kids laugh. ‘You guys lost, so you have to put the game away, right?’
‘That’s the way Daddy plays, too,’ Shanice says. ‘But sometimes he lets us win.’
Billy leans down, smiling. ‘I don’t do that.’
‘Big bully,’ she says, and giggles with her hands over her mouth.
Danny Fazio comes jingling down the stairs in a yellow rain slicker and unbuckled galoshes that gape like funnels. ‘Can I play?’
‘Next time,’ Billy says. ‘I make it a policy to only beat up on kids once a weekend.’
It’s just more joking around, what these kids might call throwing shade, but suddenly he sees burned cookies littering the floor in front of the stove in their trailer and the cast on Bob Raines’s arm thudding against the side of Cathy’s face and it isn’t funny anymore. The three kids laugh because to them it is. None of them have watched their sister being stepped on by a drunken ogre with a fading mermaid on his arm.
Upstairs, Corinne gives him a bag of cookies and says, ‘Thank you for making a rainy day so much fun for them.’
‘I had fun, too.’
He did. Right up until the end. When he gets home he throws the cookies into the trash. Corinne Ackerman is a good little baker, but he can’t think of eating cookies now. He can’t even bear to look at them.
6
On Monday he goes to see the rental agent, who does business in the sad little strip mall three blocks from 658. Merton Richter’s office is a hole-in-the-wall two-roomer between a tanning salon and the Jolly Roger Tattoo Parlor. Parked in front is a blue SUV, pretty old, with a stick-on sign on one side （RICHTER REAL ESTATE） and a long scratch on the other. The guy gives Dalton Smith’s painstakingly crafted references a cursory glance, then hands them back along with a rental agreement. The places where Billy is supposed to sign have been highlighted in yellow.
‘You could tell me it’s a little over-market,’ Richter says, as if Billy had protested, ‘and you might be right, but only a little, considering the furnishings and the WiFi. And with no street parking until six P.M., the driveway is a real convenience. You’ll be sharing it with the Jensens, of course—’
‘I’m planning to keep my car in a municipal garage for the most part. I can use the exercise.’ He pats his fake belly. ‘The rent does seem a little high, but I want the place.’
‘Sight unseen,’ Richter marvels.
‘Mrs Jensen spoke well of it.’
‘Ah, I see. In any case, if we’re in agreement …？’
Billy signs the form and writes his debut check as Dalton Smith: first month, last month, and a damage deposit that’s fucking outrageous unless the cookware is All-Clad, the china Limoges, and the lamps come with Tiffany shades.