“Like I said, she hasn’t lived here for, I don’t know, a couple years now.”

She’d never notified the DMV of a change of address, I figured. It occurred to me that maybe she didn’t come from a home where a high priority was placed on attending to such details.

“Whaddya say your name was?”

“Walker,” I said. “Zack Walker.”

“You look a bit old for Stef.”

Well, I thought, not necessarily. Just how old did she think I looked? I mean, surely it was not unheard-of for some men in their early forties to attract a woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late twenties. Maybe I didn’t work out a lot, and perhaps I could stand to lose a few pounds, but-

Shut up, I told myself.

“We’re not, you know, going out or anything,” I said. “I just needed to give her something. Maybe I could leave it with you.”

“I dunno. Like I said, she don’t live here, and she does drop by occasionally but I don’t know when. She’s so busy, you know, buying her fancy clothes and working for her fancy boss. Hasn’t got time to come by here, unless she needs some money, of course. And I’m betting she’s making enough that she could pay me back some, because I’ve got my own expenses, raising her little brother here on my own after Victor left us high and dry, don’t you know.”

That’s when I decided I couldn’t leave the purse here. I didn’t know the history between this woman and her daughter, but it was a safe bet that as soon as I handed that purse over, this woman was going to take whatever cash was in it, and I didn’t want that to be my fault.

I said, “You know, I’ll probably be running into her again soon, so I won’t bother you with this.”

“You work with Stef? You one of those realtor people?”

“Realtor? No. Where does Stef work?”

“Over at one of them new developments. In the office. Forest Estates it’s called.”

“Valley Forest Estates?”

“I think.”

And then I remembered. The receptionist who didn’t want me to see Greenway. Small frickin’ world.

“Well then, I’ll just pop into the sales office,” I said. “It’s not far from where I live. You see, we were in the checkout line at Mindy’s, and she was going through her wallet and I didn’t notice until she was gone that she had dropped her driver’s license, so I grabbed it, and this was the address that was on it, which was why I just dropped by here, you know, to give it back to her.”

Stefanie Knight’s mother looked at me, then at the shoe bag I was carrying. Was it big enough to carry an entire driver’s license?

“Or, you know, if you could let me know where I could find her, I could drop this off even before I run into her next time, because, you know, if she gets pulled over or something and has to show her license to the cops, well, I’d hate to see that happen.”

“You think the cops want to talk to her again?”

“Oh no, heck, I wasn’t suggesting that. Just for a ticket, they set up these radar traps all over the neighborhood, you know, getting their quota, whatever.”

“That’s what you got in that big bag there? Stef’s driver’s license?”

“No, no.” I paused. “I just bought some new shoes.”

“And you brung them with you to the door?” She cracked a smile, called out, “Hey, Jimmy, man’s got a new pair of shoes he wants to show ya.”

“Listen, how about if you tell me where I can find her, and just in case she calls here before I find her, I’ll leave you my name and-”

I would have said more, but I felt something large and heavy drag across the back of my legs, exerting a kind of pressure, and then, while the pressure was being maintained on the back of my legs, felt something press against the front of them down by my ankles. And I looked down, and it appeared, at a glance, that a tree trunk was wrapping itself around my legs. And I said:

“God! What the-shit!”

I didn’t just stand in one place while I said this. I started jumping up and down, threw myself up against the refrigerator, knocked a box of Froot Loops off the top and to the floor, where the contents scattered across the cracked linoleum, crunching under my feet as I continued dancing about, trying to disentangle myself from what was clearly the biggest fucking snake that ever found its way to North America.

“Jimmy!” the woman screamed. “We found Quincy!”

The snake moved away from my legs and slithered its way silently through the table and chair legs, heading for the dining room.

“That’s Quincy,” Stefanie’s mother said. “I think you scared him.”

“Jesus!” I said. My heart was pounding so hard I felt it would explode through my jacket like that little critter in the Alien movie. “What is that?”

“Quincy’s a python,” she said. “We were going to name him Monty but that seemed so obvious. He was a gift from one of Stef’s old boyfriends, but I gotta tell you, there are days I’m not so sure we wouldn’t have been better off with a dog.”

Jimmy was barreling down the stairs, running through the kitchen and into the dining room. “Come here, you son of a bitch!”

“He’s harmless,” she said.

“You’re allowed to keep a python?” I said.

The woman frowned. “You’re just like everyone else. It’s a kind of prejudice, you know? There’s a lot of misconceptions about pythons, but the fact is, they can make very nice house pets. I mean, what do you really know about pythons?”

“I’ve seen enough jungle movies and documentaries on the Discovery Channel to know they like to wrap themselves around you until you can’t breathe anymore. And later your friends can’t find you but your snake has gained two hundred fucking pounds and looks like he swallowed a Pinto.”

“Well, I wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with him, if that’s what you mean. But Quincy’s not really like that. He’s a nice python, and he loves us.” To her son: “But you know, Jimmy”-wherever he was in the house now-“I think maybe we could use a break from Quincy for a while. Maybe he’d like a little vacation. Give Richard a call, see if he’d like to take him off our hands for a day or so, I can go visit my sister.”

I tried to get my breath, my eyes darting about the room. “Maybe you could give me that address.”

She shrugged, grabbed a pen and a piece of scratch paper, and scribbled something down. “I don’t know the number, but it’s on Rambling Rose Circle. She’s got a little blue Volkswagen, one of those Beetles, the new kind?”

“Yes,” I said. But I wasn’t expecting to see a car in the driveway. The VW keys were still in Stefanie Knight’s purse, and odds were that the Beetle was still in Mindy’s parking lot.

“I think it’s the third or fourth house in, on the right,” she said.

“Let me borrow your pen,” I said. On another piece of paper I wrote down my name, and was about to put down my phone number, when I thought better of it. So far, I’d managed to shield Sarah from the knowledge that she was married to the biggest idiot on the planet. Clarification: It was possible Sarah already understood she was married to the biggest idiot on the planet, but she was still unaware of his most recent stunt. I’d confessed to stupid things in the past, but nothing approaching this. My attempt to teach Sarah a lesson had backfired on such a grand scale that I could see no good in letting her, or the kids, find out about it. The last thing I needed was Stefanie Knight phoning the house, getting Sarah, and asking for me so that she could get her driver’s license-if she accepted my story as I’d related it to her mother-or her entire purse back.

So instead of a phone number, I put down my e-mail address. “Just have her contact me there and tell her I have something of hers.” I left the piece of paper on the counter by the sink.

“Her driver’s license.”

“Sure. And a couple of other things. I think she’ll know.”

“Like I said, I don’t think I’ll be seeing her. She don’t choose to drop by here.”