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times. Ya gotta hustle.”

And Peggy just took it all in, nodding her head and smiling. I thought Peggy looked like someone listening to music who had stumbled into the wrong concert.

The stories Honey told as the night stretched on were the stuff of blues songs—how she lives in an efficiency apartment on Kent Street in a building that used to be a halfway house, that though she’s only twenty she’s been on her own since she was sixteen, that if we ever get phone calls from men we don’t recognize or anyone who sounds like a collection agency asking about Honey, we should deny knowing her.

But Peggy didn’t seem prepared to hear the blues. Her head bounced along like she was listening to a brass band playing Souza marches.

After that first meal, Bumpo and Honey spent less time in the basement and more time on the first floor. They’d be at the dinner table at least twice a week, sometimes sat in the living room with Peggy and me to watch the movies I bring home from Blockbuster every Thursday night, family nights like we hadn’t had in since Bumpo was in high school.

Peggy and I learned about Honey’s old meth boyfriend and school problems during one of our movie nights. While Bumpo and I argued about which James Bond we should watch first, Peggy asked Honey one of her stealth questions, and out it came, all at once, Honey’s hands flapping in the air like she was trying to shoo away gnats as she described her old boyfriend constantly sneaking off to his old brown Buick because he was too ashamed to use in front of her, the way he started scratching and rubbing his arms all the time, and how she once looked for GED in the yellow pages, but found only Generators-electric and now wasn’t sure what to do next, though she would like to further her education.

As soon as Honey started talking about it all, Bumpo scrunched up his face like he was trying to suck his own teeth out of his jaw. He leaned back and drummed his fingers against his spreading, soft belly. I watched Bumpo watch for Peggy’s reaction, facing Honey, but monitoring Peggy out of the corner of his eye. But Peggy wasn’t flustered. She found something heroic in Honey’s story. “Well, of course you didn’t have time for high school. Living on your own so young, that’s tough. Sometimes, you’ve just got to hustle, right?” Peggy said.

Some nights, after we had watched all the movies, and Honey and Bumpo had retreated to Bumpo’s basement room, and Peggy and I were in bed, Peggy squirming next to me, wrestling with the comforter to get it to lay just right, we’d talk about Honey, as we waited for sleep to come. We shared an unspoken understanding to focus exclusively on the positive, as if speaking negatively about Honey in our home might somehow contaminate the place and scare her away, as if she might be able to smell the scent of critical and concerned comments lingering in the drapes.

Peggy would say something like, “She certainly seems resourceful.”

And I’d say something like, “Oh, she’s definitely resourceful.”

Then Peggy’d say, “And she seems to like to laugh, that’s nice too.”

And I’d say, “She’s got a pretty laugh.”

And Peggy’d say, “And she really does seem to care about Bumpo.”

And some nights we’d go on and on like this, listening to the whirring and popTRACHoDON • 28