They drove by people with no trade save porchsitting who watched them go by with no interest and meanlooking dogs hopeless on knotted chain tethers anchored to old car casings. There was everywhere a sooty despairing dreariness. Edgewater grew restless, he felt an embryonic need to be elsewhere.

What do you think it’ll bring?

I don’t know, he said. Four or five hundred maybe.

What’ll we do with it?

Whatever you think. We might buy a vinecovered cottage in the wildwood.

Elves to do our menials, she said, smiling for the first time, scanning the houses abstractedly, looking for the one she knew so well, had no need to search for at all. Past a rotting blue mansion with a red-tiled roof, she halted the car and, peering backward with a cigarette cocked in the corner of her mouth, she cut the wheel and backed the trailer expertly over the sidewalk and down a driveway bowered by lowhanging willows. A motorcycle was parked in the driveway, a faded tarpaulin crumpled on the ground beside it.

Showtime, she said.

The house was no better or worse than its brothers, replete with garish abandoned attempts at improvement, the side had been painted a hot electric pink and the front had been homebricked. The brick started at the corner and as if drawn by an aberration of gravity began a wavering descent, tended straighter, rising then, as if the house had been set upon by a band of drunken bricklayers with not a level among them.

Edgewater got out and let down the tailgate, stood watching the house with some apprehension. He had not wanted to come, had pled other commitments. All polished chrome and sleek black leather the motorcycle seemed waiting and coiled to spring, sitting alien and futuristic. Claire got out and slammed the door, climbing slowly out of the car like someone cautiously easing into deep cold waters. There were a couple of two-by-eights in the bed of the trailer and Edgewater aligned them into a makeshift ramp and turned to the Harley-Davidson leaning on its kickstand.

He stood regarding the motorcycle. The big ugly Harley had every kind of chrome that could be bought locally or mailordered out of anywhere appended to it and it had a distinctly heavy look about it.

She stood looking the scene over narrowly, her in her cop uniform, her cop eyes, what’s the trouble here?

They goddamn, Edgewater said. They could hardly roll it. Eight hundred pounds of shittin chrome, he said. Why didn’t he just gold plate it?

She did not reply. Her face was red with exertion, throat puffed and splotchy.

Come after it, I see, a voice said.

Yes, I come after it. It’s mine, Claire said. I got the paper from the judge in my pocketbook.

A screen door slapped loosely against its frame. A short heavyset woman had come onto the back porch and she was crossing the porch rapidly in no-nonsense strides and she was rubbing her hands together in an anticipatory way.

Put one whore’s hand on that motorcycle and you’ll pull back a bloody stub, she said.

It’s mine, Claire said, I got the paper from the judge.

You know what you can do with your judge’s paper, she said. She spat toward Claire. Trash, she shouted. You slut, I didn’t think you’d have the brass. Lie on the stand about my boy the way you done and then have the spit about you to come in my very yard and bring him with you.

I didn’t lie, Claire said. But it doesn’t matter. It’s over.

Let’s go, Edgewater said.

He’d no more than raised the kickstand and angled the front wheel toward the ramp when the woman began to scream, You slut, you ruined my son’s life, you bitch. She was coming down the steps two at a time and Claire turned and took a tentative step away but the woman closed on her remorseless and implacable as a stormfront and slapped her face hard then laid a hand to each of Claire’s shoulders and flung her onto the grass.

Shit, Edgewater said, walking around the trailer. He grabbed the fat woman around the neck and began to tug her roughly off Claire. The woman whirled on him. He could smell sweat and perfume and stale deodorant and an unclassifiable smell of anger, musky, he thought of an enraged boar.