Clay never went to the same neighborhood twice. "Neighbors talk," he said. For Clay, it was about not getting caught. But Sara didn't care about that. She was afraid of being shamed in the middle of some stranger's living room. And she knew that's what would happen if someone got wise to them.

Clay's big silver Buick cruised slowly down Cypress Lane. Sara pulled a worn notepad and stubby pencil out of her jeans pocket and wrote down the street name carefully. "Do you have to do that?" Clay took one hand off the big steering wheel and grabbed at her notebook, but she snatched it away. "I swear to God you are gonna get us busted. I mean, what the hell is it for?"

Sara turned away from him and pressed her cheek against the cool of the passenger side window. She flipped through the pages of her notebook and the names of dozens of other streets slid before her eyes: Cedar Street, Royal Drive, Blackbird Court, Quarry Lane.

A little stab hit her gut. Blackbird Court was a bad one, the only time things went real wrong. Anytime she thought about it her stomach cramped up tight, the way it did whenever she thought of shameful things she'd done. Things she wanted to take back now and couldn't.

"Where the fuck is this place?" Clay had them lost as usual.

"Where did Grange say it was? And don't yell at me."

Clay reached one of his long arms over to her and slowly stroked her thigh. The red leather front seat of the Buick seemed as long as a living room couch, which was good, since it was in fact their living room.

"Sorry, baby. It's just that it's been over a day. I need a hit honey, you know, bad."

"Yeah, I know." And she did. Needing a fix was their glue, the only thing they truly shared.

"There she is. Number eight-three-nine."

Clay parked the car with a jerk, lunged across the seat and flipped open the glove box. An empty cigarette pack, dirty syringe, tampons, and some Taco Bell napkins spilled into Sara's lap and onto the floor.

Clay picked up a tampon and held it up to her face accusingly. "Do you have to put this shit in here?" Sara hung her head and looked down at the floorboard, where the syringe lay, waiting. Clay dug a small scrap of paper from the bottomless pit of the glove box.

"Now, let's get it straight. Are you listening?"

Sara didn't want to do it again, really she didn't. Afterward she always felt so bad for the people, and bad for herself and Clay. The way they lied, the way they all lied together. But she knew it was the only really safe gig for scoring on a regular basis. And, as Clay always said, no one gets hurt. Another lie.

Sara lifted her head and fixed her eyes on the house, which was across the street and up a bit from where they were parked.

"OK, what's the drill," Sara said quietly.

"They bought it a couple of years ago." Clay looked up and squinted at the white two-story house with green shutters. A kid's bike lay sprawled dead center in the driveway, like it had been dropped there from the sky.

"Nice digs, eh? Anyway, before that it was in probate. Do you remember what that means?" Sara nodded. She didn't quite but she figured she could fake it if it was important to the scam. She was good at improvising in front of strangers. Her Dad used to say she could be an actress someday.

"What it means is that the people who live there now didn't get to talk to the people that lived there before, cause they're dead. And that's a very good thing for us." He paused and closed his eyes like he always did when he needed to think. Sara noticed the way his long blond eyelashes curled up and out, which made his eyes look large and innocent, like a child's. She thought about how soft his lashes felt when he brushed them against her cheek.

He started up again. "So. We are now the long lost niece and nephew of this dead guy, Daniel Jacobs, and we spent every summer here during the early eighties while our parents went to Europe. Now we're just passing through and we stopped by to have a look at the place, for old time's sake. Got it?"

"Why did our parents go to Europe without us?"

"Goddamit Sara, don't do this. I'm making it up, it's make-believe. I know you know that."

"I just don't know why your stories always have to be so sad."

"You're the only thing that's sad. Get it together cause we're going in."

Clay turned the rearview mirror toward himself and spread his thick lips out in a big grinding grin to inspect his smile. Once, after a hit over in Silver Crest, he'd found a big piece of something black and ugly in between his two front teeth. It had been there the whole time he talked his talk to the people inside the house. Sara had seen it but decided not to tell him because of how mean he'd been to her the night before. Ever since then he checks his teeth before he goes in, even though they're stained yellow from drugs and cigarettes anyway. Sometimes it nearly made Sara insane that Clay was shamed by the way he had looked that day, but never by what he had done.