I paused outside Porter Square Station, in my wet clothes, to observe what a sign there called a kinetic sculpture—three elevated red objects shaped like tongues, tumbling about their axes and orbiting a tall white pole. My thoughts circled back to Theta’s shocked expression at my rent, which led me to review my predicted costs—food, transportation, utilities—and wonder if I’d overlooked something. After a brief trance, I descended a long escalator to the commuter rail platform and boarded the train to Wilton. Soon I was passing the same backyards and open spaces I’d sped by in March, no longer barren and covered with dirty snow, but green, with that profusion of young spring leaves I associated with Impressionist paintings. A pond slid into view, its edges blurred by clumps of reeds. The rain started again. It drew long diagonal streaks across the windows. Anyone want to get off at Brandeis? the conductor called as she strode up the aisle. That was a question, she added cheerfully. Not a threat.

I was reminded that my own home city on the other side of the world also took its name from boiled beans. There must be many other Beantowns, I thought, if in my limited travels I’d already managed to live in two, one landlocked and one coastal. As our guide continued to tell his stories—of these paths being originally trod by cows, of the gold dome having once been wooden until Paul Revere and his sons plated it with copper, of the theft of the wood-carved Sacred Cod by a group of Harvard students, holding up the deliberations of the state legislature for days—I watched my cousin listening with something like rapture, frequently clapping her hand over her mouth in shock and delight. I, too, was engaged by the anecdotes, some of which were even familiar to me, captivated by our guide’s delivery. Infotainment, I thought: the thing that had been absent from my own education and that my students expected. None of them would have been particularly impressed by the tour; to find this presentation refreshing, one needed to have been exposed to history, as my cousin and I had, as little more than a compendium of facts to be memorized—the precise dimensions of the Taj Mahal, the number of soldiers killed in the Kalinga War.

I apologized for not being able to give her a place to stay. When I was still living at the landlord’s mother’s, she’d asked if she could crash with me, at least until she found accommodations of her own, and I’d said, regretfully, that my place was too small. The house had spare rooms, but I’d shied from the prospect of a family member staying with me, the old lady watching us with her hostile, curious gaze, my cousin’s singsong speech and her accent, much more pronounced than mine—it was the heavy Tamilian accent that even in Bangalore would have been mimicked and mocked—the landlord’s sister scolding me in front of my cousin, implicating us both in the neglect of her mother, and then my cousin reporting to her parents, who’d relay to mine, that I was living in a shabby room in a shabby American house whose owners were scary and rude, prompting my mother to call and chastise me, saying she didn’t understand why I was living like a vagabond in America—was this my long-term plan?

We didn’t know much about addiction, about homelessness, but we knew how it could look. We’d watched a man nod into his own lap in the Tim Hortons on Abbott Street, had seen kids hawk lone red and white carnations in plastic sleeves to drivers on the interchange off-ramp. We’d heard the spellbound murmurs of the woman who sat all day at the bus shelter on Fillmore. We offered these people things we thought they’d want. Some days one said yes to a cheeseburger or a Filet-O-Fish or a hot coffee, and other days no one wanted anything but whatever coins and cash we had.

We were many times not helpful at all. One winter, Mary Lucille came across a man asleep next to the grocery carts in the Tops lot. She tapped him on the shoulder and asked, when he roused, if he wanted a ride to the shelter. He shook his head. Or, she said, she could take him to McDonald’s for a chicken sandwich, or fries, or a parfait. 

“A parfait?” the man said. He squinted at her. “What the hell is a parfait?” 

In class I talked about the triangle. Everything good comes in threes, I said: the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost; frankincense, gold, myrrh. In the case of triangles: angles, lines, and vertices. The girls drew triangles on the board and named them: BLT; breakfast, lunch, dinner; Beyoncé, Kelly, Michelle. 

I took it all too seriously, maybe. I spoke of congruent shapes in reverent tones; how special, how beautiful, that two shapes might coincide completely when superimposed. 

The students took turns tracing the outlines of each other’s bodies, and then shrank them to scale. This activity was meant to demonstrate the ratio of the girl’s shape to her miniature. 

I don’t know what I was thinking. What kind of dolt forced a bunch of girls to stare long and hard at their own bodies, then imagine what it’d be like if they took up less space?

At first, we were gentle and sweet. “Are you in labor?” Frances asked, and Mary Lucille stroked Mickey’s hair.

Mickey could only howl. 

And then we were no longer sweet. Everything announced itself to us with urgency: the droop of Mickey’s wet pants; her lips, pale and raw. Our knowledge of birth came from the movies. About the pain, we asked how long, what kind, how big, and her answers came as moans. I pressed the artery in her wrist and counted its swell. 

When we told Mickey we’d better take her to the hospital, she opened her eyes and seemed to notice us for the first time. “Sisters,” she said. “Am I gonna die?” 

The ambulance dispatcher reported that Woonsocket’s ambulance was stuck in the snow. “Try a cab,” the operator said. “Or a friend.” 

Empire Cab, Orange Cab, Island Cab, and Mr. Taxi quoted Frances hourlong waits. “Eight inches of snow, honey,” one of the men told her. 

Mickey spat swears like seeds.

And then we ran to the door to see the indomitable vehicle charge down the sidewalk, bright and brave and undeterred by snow: the gleaming orange lawnmower, and oh, yes, perched upright on the seat, gallant and brilliant in her sequins, was Lawnmower Jill, her bare arms pink. We watched her come to a stop outside the Tedeschi, and Horse handed her a beer. 

Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.

Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.

He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?

“Would you like me to open the wine for you, sir?” Able God asked, raising his voice. There was no answer. The water was still running.

Able God stood with his hands behind his back, surveying the cart. It was all he could do to keep his eyes away from the woman on the bed. His palms sweaty, he recalled what Mr. Hastrup had said about how to treat guests, anticipate their needs, and exceed their expectations. Anything to assuage the oddities of a situation.

“I also brought some bottles of San Pellegrino in case you run out of the ones in your bar.”

Again, no answer. Able God looked over at the woman. Her eyes were still unfocused, and she was rocking back and forth. Now that he could see her more clearly, she had a feather tattoo that began on her shoulder. A few seconds went by, then the water stopped running.

“You may leave!” the voice boomed from the bathroom.

“Yes, sir! Please don’t hesitate to call us if you need anything else, sir!” 

“I said leave!” 

“Yes, sir! Enjoy the rest of your morning, sir, and madam!” He prepared to exit with arms stiff. But before doing so, he gave the woman one last look. This time, she did not look away but met his gaze.

The boys moved to the next phase of their alchemy. They mixed cocktails of crushed tramadol tablets, codeine cough syrup, and Coca-Cola in water bottles. Three of them gathered the crushed ingredients and rolled up fat joints. The joints gave off a sickly smell, like burning refuse. Able God covered his nose in disgust.

“I have to get ready for work very soon,” Able God lied to Morufu, who was chatting with a boy leaning against the fence. The boy wore a filthy singlet and had red, sunken eyes. His body was as slim as the trunk of a sapling.

“What?” Morufu asked.

“I have to go. I have work.”

Morufu protested. “No, man! Drink and smoke, then you can go. Abi, you got no liver?” Then raising his voice for everyone to hear, he continued, “This friend of mine wants to leave because he wants to go to work.” Morufu broke into a laugh. Some of the boys laughed with him. The one wearing the filthy singlet passed Able God a joint.

“It won’t smell so bad when the drug starts working magic in your body.”

Able God steeled himself and brought the joint to his mouth.

Your phone alarm went off at eight. “I only got in a fight one time,” you told me after I told you my dream. “I was playing in the sandbox with my friend and he got mad at me for beating him in a game, so he punched me in the face. My mom took one look at me and said, ‘Never let anyone hit you.’ So she made me go back there and fight him.”

“How’d that go?” I asked.

“I felt bad! We were both crying the whole time. I think I won. I bit him a few times.”

“Sounds excessive.”

“Nuh-uh! When you grow up in poor communities, you have to do violent things to survive. Because if people think they can mess with you, they’ll keep messing with you, and your life will be ten times harder than if you just do unpleasant things. Like bite a boy on the playground. Yeah!” you affirmed with a prim little nod.

For Leroy I put on pantyhose, a leather miniskirt, and black ankle boots with charms on the zippers, and, though Jennifer Beals doesn’t wear them in the scene I’ve rewound endlessly for reference—the one where she kicks it in her loft with the supposed-to-be-a-nice-guy-but-actually-kind-of-creepy-and-girl-now-that-I-think-about-it-ain’t-he-twice-her-age love interest—black leg warmers are a must.

For Leroy I wear a baggy aquamarine sweater with wide sleeves, one shoulder down. On my face go cleanser, moisturizers, concealer, foundation, bronzing powder, blush, eye shadow, mascara, ChapStick, and Revlon 5 to evoke Alex from Flashdance, a steel-town girl, a nymph terrified the dance school will reject her, slutty enough to feel you up under the table at a fancy restaurant, tough enough to punch a strip club sleaze, any ethnicity, mass market appeal, curly wig to my shoulders, hair-so-big-because-my-brain-holds-so-many-dreams '80s It Girl with a heart as pure as the cocaine grown by Reagan’s contras. I kiss the mirror. Mwah!

“Black woman—”

“When is you gon’ try the casserole? It’ll take your mind off it. Cleanse your thoughts.”

“Black woman—”

“I slaved over that casserole.”

“They should write a book about your suffering. Twenty Minutes a Slave. Black woman, I love you, but I’ma slap you.”

“Try.”

Accepting her challenge, I can barely twitch my forearms with her elbows on me. I try again and yell, full force, “Yo! Let me move my fucking arms.”

“I learned this in self-defense class. I’m Jason Bourne in this bitch.”

“Get off me!”

She does. Instantly I’m on my feet, and we circle with our dukes up, play slaps our love language.

“Oh my gosh,” I hear Leroy chuckle. “Y’all are like my kids.”

How embarrassing that I’m embarrassed. Even as I resent his condescending words, his indulgent wholesomeness leads me to take his hand and hurry him to the bathroom, slam the door, push his back to the wall, and, before I kiss him, grab hold of him, one hand to his gasping throat, the other the carafe of his cheek.