Sunlight peeked through the old cotton curtains, throwing shadows of the flower embroidery onto the bed. Ikher squinted and covered his eyes before rubbing his face. Trying to sit up, he found Candace’s arm and leg draped across him, her face buried in a pillow, muffling her snores. Memories of last night flooded in, lots of sex and lots of weed.

  Stomach grumbling, he slid her leg off and wiggled out from under her arm. After sorting himself in the bathroom, Ikher made his way to the kitchen and made a frittata. Once done, he got a glass of water and sat at the table looking out the bay window while he ate.

  Either he'd missed everyone leaving for work or the neighborhood was quiet for a weekday. The little cul-de-sac had only five houses, Ikher’s at the end and two on each side of the street. His lot backed up to a park which was the center of the Oak Grove residential area. He made a mental note to go explore the park later.

  Putting away his leftovers, Ikher remembered Candace and went back to the bedroom.

  “Hey, want some breakfast?” he asked, gently shaking her shoulder. She stirred, squinted up at him only to let her head drop back to the pillow. After a moment, her eyes shot open, and she bolted up, clutching the sheets.

  “What time is it?!”

  “I dunno,” he said, dodging as she threw the sheets off her, jumped out of bed, and started frantically searching for something. She ran to the front room and shrieked, finding her watch.

  “Fuck! I missed a class and I’m super late for my next one!" she screamed, grabbing her jeans. "Why didn’t you wake me up?!”

  “I didn’t know I needed to!” he said, jumping back to avoid her bouncing around, trying to squeeze into her jeans. Candace shot him a nasty look as she buttoned them and snatched her blouse off the floor.

  “Not everyone graduated Ikher! Think of someone else for a change!” she said, pulling her shirt on. Grabbing her sandals, her head snapped around looking for something before shrieking, “Where the fuck is my purse?!” Ikher scanned the living room before he picked it up from beside the couch.

  “Got it!” he said, holding it out.

  “Ugh!” she huffed, snatching it before going out the front door and slamming it shut.

  Ikher spent the rest of the morning unboxing and putting away his things. He didn’t own much beyond his clothes, a couple books, a skateboard, and his game system. He'd given everything else away, though he regretted letting his roommate keep the TV. The one here was too old to connect with his game system.

  After putting the broken-down boxes in the recycling bin, he did a circuit of the house and yard. The siding was in decent shape, the windows were sealed well, and the grass had been mowed. Age or storms had beaten the waist high picket fence going around the house, making it very much in need of repair.

  The little shed in the back of the yard contained a variety of manual tools, with a power drill and flashlight being the only electric devices. There was also an old reel mower and a ladder large enough to get him to the roof. ‘Save that for another day,’ he thought as he headed back inside.

  He opened the room across from the bathroom and flung open the curtains. His mother had left an old bagged vacuum cleaner and a box of trash bags. ‘Might as well make this storage,’ he decided but then realized he hadn’t seen a washer or dryer.

  “Vacuum bags, condoms, and find a laundromat,” he listed out loud as he grabbed his skateboard. Outside, as he put his skateboard down and kicked off, Ikher noticed one of his neighbors fighting to get her trash bin down to the corner. She was an older woman, curlers in her white hair, wearing a long floral print dress with sandals. She wasn’t much larger than the trash bin she was struggling with, so Ikher rolled over to her driveway and hopped off, offering to help.

  “Oh, thank you, young man,” she exclaimed, patting his shoulder as he took the bin from her. Hunched over, she barely reached Ikher’s chin and looked up at him through thick-framed glasses that made her eyes look huge. “This thing just gets so heavy when it’s full.”

  “No problem!” he said, turning the bin toward the road. “I just moved in at the end of the road. I was going to wander the neighborhood a bit when I saw you.”

  “Oh! You took the house at the end? It’s been ages since someone lived there. My husband swore up and down they would demolish it and expand the park. But I told him they couldn’t do that to private land,” she said, patting his arm with a liver spotted hand and pointed to her house. “Could I offer you a drink and a cookie? I have to thank you for being so nice.”

  “Oh, no thank you. I ate not too long ago. But if you could tell me where the stores are around here, that would help.” She smiled and launched into all the ways to reach the stores, the history of surrounding areas, each shops history, and the former and current owners.

  It was a little past noon when Ikher skated out of the cul-de-sac onto the main road. Crossing over the river, he turned onto the smaller road and saw the large library Ada said would be the first thing he'd see in the commercial district.

  Beyond the library was an old brick double building that used to be a deli and slaughterhouse combo. When that business closed, the new owners merged the buildings into Shape Shifters, the local gym. Peeking in the enormous windows on the first floor, Ikher saw an array of equipment and a kickboxing class.

  The two-story French-style brick building next to the gym was the Velvet nightclub, with an elaborate neon sign of a man playing the trombone. A closed sign hung crooked in the door, but Ikher could hear someone playing the piano inside. After listening for a bit, he figured he’d come back and check the place out. A large deep voice yelled as Ikher rolled away from the building.

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  “No skateboarding on the sidewalk!”

  Turning, he saw a uniformed police officer stomping up to him. Ikher’s eyes grew wide and his heart jumped into his throat. He was sure he still had a baggie of weed in his back pocket.

  “You ride that in the street or you don’t ride it at all. You got me,” the cop ordered with a pointed finger.

  “Completely,” Ikher said, kicking the board up and holding it at his chest as the officer stopped in front of him.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be riding a skateboard?”

  “I, um, don’t have a car so this is how I get around,” Ikher replied, frozen in place, staring at his panicked face reflected in the cop’s aviator sunglasses. Breathe, calm down, don’t look suspicious.

  “I haven’t seen you around here before. Where are you from? Let me see some identification,” the officer demanded as a high pitched voice cried out. They both turned to look as a little brown-skinned girl ran into the cop’s leg and grab onto him.

  “I can’t find my daddy!” she wailed, mashing her face into the officer’s leg. He peeled her off and knelt as she parted her dark curly hair back to reveal enormous scared dark brown eyes. She couldn’t have been more than five or six and had a sizeable gap in her front teeth. The officer took her tiny hands in his.

  “Where did you see him last?” he asked, his gentle tone the complete opposite of the hard-ass attitude he had given Ikher. The girl wiped her face and pointed in the direction Ikher had come. “Let’s go look for him, okay?” the cop said, and she held her arms out. The officer picked her up and held her at his shoulder.

  “Don’t let me catch you on the sidewalks again,” he ordered before turning and walking in the direction the girl had pointed. Leaning over the cops shoulder, she gave Ikher an enormous smile and winked at him before waving goodbye.

  Not sure what to make of that, Ikher decided not to take any chances and be on his way. He walked with the skateboard under his arm, remembering nasty encounters with the campus police, and had no desire to revisit that here. A couple blocks down he saw the shops Ada had mentioned.

  An expensive looking powder blue sedan sat at his curb when Ikher returned home. No one was waiting on the porch or on either side of the house, so he went in and set his things on the table.

  “Hello?” he called. No reply. He did a quick check of all the rooms but turned up nothing there either. Shrugging, he put away his purchases then warmed up the last bit of his frittata. Taking his meal over to the couch, he started a list of repairs and updates he wanted to do as he ate.

  The list, he realized, would require money and his cash was dwindling. Leaning back on the couch, he pondered his financial situation. His literary degree wouldn’t do him much good unless he wanted to teach, and he had seen no schools in his wanderings today. Odd jobs wouldn’t pay much or be frequent enough. Push come to shove, he could work at the gym or one of the stores he saw today.

  He sighed and got up to put his dish in the sink when he saw people walking by his house going to the park. Now seemed as good as any time to explore as the dishes and finances weren’t going anywhere.

  Exiting the house, Ikher followed the worn dirt path leading into the woods until he reached a huge weeping willow tree. Its' hanging vines blew towards him as he approached and passed through its canopy. Inside the umbrella, it was even more impressive with a massive trunk and gnarled roots that reached out of the ground to snag unsuspecting feet.

  Ikher maneuvered through the roots and stood next to the trunk, leaning back to look up. The tree must have been at least fifty feet tall and its rough weathered bark was oddly warm. He smiled, knowing his mother could make some remedy out of the bark or vines.

  “I’ll have to bring her back here next time she visits,” he remarked to himself before leaving the tree and continuing down the dirt path. It dead-ended into a paved walkway that followed the river with breaks every so often in the short, waist-high, concrete wall. He leaned out over the wall, looking both ways but couldn’t see a bridge. Across the river, there were expensive McMansions and some older Victorian styled homes which looked haunted.

  Ikher followed the walkway until he ran into an older man and a young girl fishing. The olive skinned, grey bearded man wore a mesh vest and hat with all manner of fishing paraphernalia attached. The girl, chestnut pigtails sticking out from under a similar hat, had a smaller vest with stuffed animals and plastic fishing toys attached.

  “Catch anything good?” Ikher waved as he approached.

  “Not so far,” the man sighed.

  “We got a fish THIS big last week!” the girl exclaimed, throwing her arms out as wide as they would go.

  “Wow! That’s almost as big as you!” Ikher replied, making the little girl grin and nod.

  “Not quite that big,” the man corrected her, laughing as he wiggled his line.

  “Well, good luck,” he said, continuing on. Further down the path, he pulled his shoes off and sat down with his feet in the warm water. Ikher lost track of time as he watched the sky above the mountains change colors as the sun set behind him.

  His new friend from this morning, Ada, and her husband, Georges, wandered by on their evening stroll. If the phrase ‘the longer you’re married to someone, the more you become like them’ was true, Ada and Georges had been married since the dawn of time. They were both short and round with white hair and an abundance of wrinkles.

  Ada chatted up Ikher for a bit before Georges managed to disengage her so they could get back on their way. Most other passersby were jogging or running. Ikher would say hi or wave as they passed. A woman in a white tracksuit and large sunglasses ran up to his spot, stopped and checked her pulse. He craned his neck up to see she was tall with porcelain skin and a tight blond ponytail.

  “Pretty day isn’t it?"

  “I don’t have any change," she replied, still eyeing her watch.

  “Pardon?” Ikher said, shaking his head and squinting. She let out an irritated sigh, pulling her foot to her butt in a stretch.

  “I said, I don’t have any change.”

  “Oh! I’m not homeless. I live back that way,” he said, gesturing with his thumb behind him.

  “Okay,” she replied, focusing on stretching her other leg. Before he could think of a reply, she glanced at her watch again and took off.

  “Have a nice evening!” he called after her. Ikher stayed at his spot until the sky’s reds and oranges faded to purples and blues. Worried he wouldn’t be able to find his way back if it got too dark, Ikher collected his shoes and headed back.

  The big weeping willow looked even more imposing when illuminated from behind by the street lights. He couldn’t resist touching it again and found it still warm to the touch. Remembering his mother’s hippie talk, Ikher wrapped his arms around the tree and gave it squeeze. Letting go, he wished the tree a good night and continued home to find the car in front of his house gone.

  The willow tree wasn’t the only thing that looked different in the street lights. The small beaten fence cast a mangled shadow, making it look twice as broken. Sitting down at the top of his steps, he decided that he’d start work on the fence tomorrow. No one was out in the cul-du-sac so Ikher pulled the small joint from his back pocket and fired it up.

  “Let’s see, I got cursed out by Candace, harassed by the cops, and called homeless. Not bad for a first day,” he said, chuckling to himself.