“And you need to do this now.”

“He closes pretty soon, and I was thinking I might work on it tonight, after dinner.”

“I always liked Batman,” Trixie said. “Although I guess my favorite was Catwoman. Something about the outfit.”

Sarah sighed. “If you can, be fast, ’cause I’m getting hungry.”

I tossed the bag into the back seat, then worried Sarah would look in it. But so long as she believed it had something to do with Batman, I was safe. “I’ll just get the barbecue going,” I said, and ran back into the house, through the kitchen, and out through the glass doors to the deck. I opened the lid on the barbecue, turned on the gas, and, forever the optimist, pressed the red ignition button.

Nothing.

I clicked it a second time, then a third. “Goddamn thing.” Why did I think it would suddenly start working now, just because I had an urgent errand to run? This’ll work forever, the salesman said when we bought it. How long ago had that been? Three months, four?

By now, there was enough propane circulating in the atmosphere that if the red button beat the odds and actually worked on the fourth try, they’d be picking up pieces of me in Trixie’s backyard. I turned the valve off hard, waved my hand around to disperse the gas, and went into the house for some matches. Confident there was no leftover propane hanging around in the atmosphere, I turned the gas back on and immediately dropped a lit match into the bottom of the barbecue. There was a soft “poof” as the flame ignited.

I got the burners on both sides going, then lowered the lid to let the heat build up.

Paul and his buddies were coming into the kitchen as I came through the glass doors. “What’s to eat?” Paul asked.

“I’m just heating up the barby,” I said. “If your friends want hot dogs or something, I think we’ve got some in the fridge. I’ve got to go out for a few minutes.”

“Don’t forget your purse,” said Andy, who was already into our fridge like it was his own. “You got any Coke?”

“Dad,” Paul said. “You got a sec?”

I didn’t, but I stopped anyway. “Yeah?”

“Angie told me she told you what I wanted to do.”

I was trying to remember. “Maybe you could refresh my memory.”

“About a tattoo.”

“No.”

“No, she didn’t tell you?”

“Yes, she told me, and no, you can’t get one.”

Paul was crestfallen. “Can we, like, talk about this?”

“We are talking about this. And I’m saying no.”

“I don’t believe this. You haven’t even heard me out. You don’t even know what I’m asking for.”

“Are you asking whether you can get a tattoo?”

“Maybe, yeah, but-”

“You’re too young. You need my permission, I think, at any reputable tattoo parlor, to get a tattoo at your age, and I’m not signing.”

“Everyone has them, Dad. It’s not a big deal.”

“I’d love to discuss this with you, but I have an errand to run.”

“Sure. Walk away.”

I grabbed my cell phone off the table by the front door and slid it into my jacket pocket on the way out, didn’t stop to chat with Sarah and Trixie, who were still at the end of the drive, and squealed out.

Once I was down around the corner on Lilac, where I couldn’t be seen, I pulled over and got out the map book. Deer Prance Drive was on the other side of Oakwood. I got across town in about fifteen minutes and found that Stefanie Knight’s house was in a new development that was every bit as architecturally fascinating as our own, except this one was completely finished, no uncovered foundations, no houses waiting for sod.

Deer Prance was off Autumn Leaves Lane (God almighty, where would it end?), and as I turned onto it, I leaned back in the seat enough that I could reach into the front pocket of my jeans and fish out the piece of paper with the street number on it. There was still another hour of sunlight, and the house numbers were easy to read.

Deer Prance was a street of relatively new townhouses, and I found 2223 on the left side, about two-thirds of the way down. The driveway already had an old Ford Escort in it, and there was no room either behind or next to it for my car, so I found a spot at the curb.

As I got out of the car, the drawstring of the bag looped around my hand, I noticed that for a new development, this stretch already had a slightly run-down look. The paint was peeling on some of the garage doors, one car up the street was on blocks, and tucked out of the way between 2223 and 2225 were a rusted-out stove and an abandoned tricycle.

As I mounted the steps, I noticed two cases of empty beer bottles, just outside the door, waiting to be taken back to the store. There was an aluminum screen door between me and the wooden front door, but I didn’t have to pull it open to knock. There was no glass or screen in it, so I rapped directly on the wood.

I could hear some talking inside, and a radio going, but no sound of approaching footsteps. After about ten seconds, I knocked again.

Inside, a woman’s voice: “Jimmy!”

A pause, a young man’s voice, from somewhere deeper in the house, perhaps upstairs: “What?”

“Door!”

“Get it yourself! I still can’t find Quincy!”

“Jesus, why the fuck did you let him out anyway?”

“Get the frickin’ door yourself, your legs broken?”

“You better find him lickety-split!”

I heard some padding toward the door, and then it opened only a crack.

“Yeah?” I saw a sliver of a woman’s face. One eye, a cheek, half a mouth.

“Uh, hi. I was looking for Stefanie?”

“Stef? You’re looking for Stef?”

Stef. Now that rang a bell.

“Yes,” I said. “Would she be in?”

“I’m gonna invite you in,” the woman said. “But when I open the door, you have to come in real fast. Y’understand?”

Hesitantly, I said, “Sure.”

And then the door swung open wide, the woman grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me inside, then closed the door forcefully. I was going to have to be fitted with a whiplash collar.

“I don’t want Quincy to get out,” she said. I glanced around the floor, looking for a little dog or cat, but saw nothing.

This woman might have been fifty, but it had been a hard fifty. Her hair was gray and pinned back, and she wore a white short-sleeved blouse with enough grease stains to qualify it as a Jackson Pollock. Her short sleeves revealed meaty shoulders and upper arms.

“So you want Stef?” The woman cocked her head just a little, looked me up and down, and her eyes danced darkly.

From upstairs: “Is it for me, Mom?”

“No!” Not taking her eyes off me. “Just keep looking!” She sighed. “She don’t live here,” she said coolly, glancing down at the plastic bag that hung from my wrist.

“Oh. Okay. See, I had this address for her, but if I’ve got the wrong house…”

“You got the right house. But she don’t live here no more. She hant lived here for a couple years at least. What’s your business with her?”

I wasn’t sure whether to say. So instead I asked, “Would you happen to be Stefanie’s mother?”

“Yeah.”

“I had something I had to return to her, and was going to drop it off here, but if she doesn’t live here, maybe you could tell me where I might find her.”

“Is it whatever you got in the bag there?”

“Maybe if you had an address?”

The woman jerked her head to motion me further inside. I followed her into a narrow kitchen where the sink was stacked with dishes and a cigarette sat burning in an ashtray on a table that was part of an aging aluminum and formica set that couldn’t have been original to this house. The table surface, what you could see of it, given the number of empty beer and wine bottles, was pockmarked with cigarette burns. “Just follow me,” she said.

There were more burns on the cracked linoleum floor and several places where it had been gouged, revealing plywood underneath. The counter next to the overloaded sink was littered with more dishes and more empty beer bottles and crumpled Big Mac cartons flecked with shreds of lettuce and smears of Special Sauce.