The grill-woman at the barbecue joint greeted him by name and the men and women around it made s.p.a.ce for him. It was friendly and companionable, and after a moment Francis wandered up with a couple of his proteges. They carried boxes of beer.

"Hey hey," Francis said. "Home again, huh?"

"Home again," Perry said. He wiped rib-sauce off his fingers and shook Francis's hand warmly. "G.o.d, I've missed this place."

"We missed having you," Francis said. "Big crowds across the way, too. Seems like you hit on something."

Perry shook his head and smiled and ate his ribs. "What's the story around here?"

"Lots and lots," Francis said. "There's a whole net-community thing happening. Lots of traffic on the AARP message-boards from other people setting these up around the country."

"So you've hit on something, too."

"Naw. When it's railroading time, you get railroads. When it's squatter time, you get squats. You know they want to open a 7-Eleven here?"

"No!" Perry laughed and choked on ribs and then guzzled some beer to wash it all down.

Francis put a wrinkled hand over his heart. He still wore his wedding band, Perry saw, despite his wife's being gone for decades. "I swear it. Just there." He pointed to one of the busier corners.

"And?"

"We told them to f.u.c.k off," Francis said. "We've got lots of community-owned businesses around here that do everything a 7-Eleven could do for us, without taking the wealth out of our community and sending it to some corporate jack-off. Some soreheads wanted to see how much money we could get out of them, but I just kept telling them -- whatever 7-Eleven gives us, it'll only be because they think they can get more *out of us*.' They saw reason. Besides, I'm in charge -- I always win my arguments."

"You are the most benevolent of dictators," Perry said. He began to work on another beer. Beer tasted better outside in the heat and the barbecue smoke.

"I'm glad someone thinks so," Francis said.

"Oh?"

"The 7-Eleven thing left a lot of people p.i.s.sed at me. There's plenty around here that don't remember the way it started off. To them, I'm just some alter k.o.c.ker who's keeping them down."

"Is it serious?" Perry knew that there was the potential for serious, major lawlessness from his little settlement. It wasn't a failing condo complex rented out to Filipina domestics and weird entrepreneurs like him. It was a place where the cops would love an excuse to come in with riot batons (his funny eyebrow twitched) and gas, the kind of place where there almost certainly were a few very bad people living their lives. Miami had bad people, too, but the bad people in Miami weren't his problem.

And the bad people and the potential chaos were what he loved about the place, too. He'd grown up in the kind of place where everything was predictable and safe and he'd hated every minute of it. The glorious chaos around him was just as he liked it. The wood-smoke curled up his nose, fragrant and all-consuming.

"I don't know anymore. I thought I'd retire and settle down and take up painting. Now I'm basically a mob boss. Not the bad kind, but still. It's a lot of work."

"Pimpin' ain't easy." Perry saw the shocked look on Francis's face and added hastily, "Sorry -- not calling you a pimp. It's a song lyric is all."

"We got pimps here now. Wh.o.r.es, too. You name it, we got it. It's still a good place to live -- better than Miami, if you ask me -- but it could go real animal. Bad, bad animal."

Hard to believe, standing there in the wood-smoke, licking his fingers, drinking his beer. His cold seemed to have been baked out by the steamy swampy heat.

"Well, Francis, if anyone knows how to keep peace, it's you."

"Social workers come around, say the same thing. But there's people around here with little kids, they worry that the social workers could force them out, take away their children."

It wasn't like Francis to complain like this, it wasn't in his nature, but here it was. The strain of running things was showing on him. Perry wondered if his own strain was showing that way. Did he complain more these days? Maybe he did.

An uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Perry drank his beer, morosely. He thought of how ridiculous it was to be morose about the possibility that he was being morose, but there you had it.

Finally his phone rang and saved him from further conversation. He looked at the display and shook his head. It was Kettlewell again. That first voicemail had made him laugh aloud, but when they hadn't called back for a couple days, he'd figured that they had just had a little too much wine and placed the call.

Now they were calling back, and it was still pretty early on the West Coast. Too early for them to have had too much wine, unless they'd really changed.

"Perry Perry Perry!" It was Kettlebelly. He sounded like he might be drunk, or merely punch-drunk with excitement. Perry remembered that he got that way sometimes.

"Kettlewell, how are you doing?"

"I'm here too, Perry. I cashed in my return ticket."

"Suzanne?"

"Yeah," she said. She too sounded punchy, like they'd been having a fit of the giggles just before calling. "Kettlewell's family have taken me in, wayward wanderer that I am."

"You two sound pretty, um, happy."

"We've been having an amazing time," Kettlewell said. His speakerphone made him sound like he was at the bottom of a well. "Mostly reminiscing about you guys. What the h.e.l.l are you up to? We tried to follow it on the net, but it's all jumbled. What's this about a *story*?"

"Story?"

"I keep reading about this ride of yours and its story. I couldn't make any sense of it."

"I haven't read any of this, but Lester and I were talking about some stuff to do with stories tonight. I didn't know anyone else was talking about this, though. Where'd you see it?"

"I'll email it to you," Suzanne said. "I was going to blog it tonight anyway."

"So you two are just hanging around San Francisco giggling and walking down memory lane?"

"Well, yeah! It's about time, too. We've all been separated for too long. We want a reunion, Perry."

"A reunion?"

"We want to come down for a visit and see what you're doing and hang out. You wouldn't believe how much fun we've been having, Perry, seriously." Kettlewell sounded like he'd been huffing nitrous or something. "Have *you* been having fun?"

He thought about the question. "Um, kind of?" He told them about his travels, a quick thumbnail sketch, struggling to remember which city he'd been to when, leaving out the crazy s.e.x -- which came back to him in a rush, that night with Hilda in the coffin, like a warm hallucination. "On balance, yes. It's been fun."

"Right, so we want to come down and have fun with you and Lester. He's still hanging around, right?"

Lester had told him about the history he had with Suzanne, and there was something in the way she asked after Lester that suggested to Perry that there was still something there.

"You kidding? You'd have to pry us apart with a crowbar."

"See, I told you so," Suzanne said. "This guy thought that Lester might have gotten bored and wandered off."

"Never! Plus anyone who follows his message board traffic and blogs would know that he was right here, minding the shop." And you're reading his blog, aren't you, Suzanne? He didn't need to say it. He could almost hear her blush over the line.

"So how about tomorrow?"