I date Brodie while I’m visiting Seattle. He shares a draughty old house with a bunch of roommates, including a blue-naped parrot who lives in a big cage looking out at a treehouse.

In the dead of summer, while the whiptails hide in sagebrush shadows, and everything blisters in the amber heat and there ain’t nothin but buzzards hummin for miles around, a hanged man dances on a gallows pole.

Dayne’s on-off-off-on stepdad, Kel, says stay away from that new pet shop.

They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny. First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people.

You don’t like her much, not that you can tell her that. Slugging along behind you, hands in pockets. Sullen as a fish despite the fucking dawn rising over the city, the glory of it.