. . . “And I could swear a light just went on upstairs in the yellow house.” I point to it. “Do you sense Kandel there?”

“No. I don’t think I can sense her. She’s just in my head sometimes. I don’t have any sense of nearness of her body when she’s in my head, though. But she’s comin’.” There it is again, fuck me.

“We gotta go check out the yellow house,” I decide, suppressing the urge to ask U about her comin’ routine, which sounds like something outta Lenny Bruce, the “ ‘To’ is a preposition” routine, one of Mom’s faves. “Wait here a second, I’m gonna go in and get G.” I give U a gentle kiss on the lips, which involves me standing on tiptoe and sorta pulling her down toward me. She smells like buckwheat pancakes redolent of Vermont maple syrup with rich suggestions of fresh Sumatran roast with a touch of heavy cream and two turbinado sugars. I do the patio door slide. Some record is playing I don’t recognize, Creedence ended some time ago, and as I pass through the dining room the song changes to “Eli’s Comin’,” but it’s not Nyro, it’s a guy. I freeze. Am I having a psychic episode of intuitional volitional cognition? And so what if I am? Isn’t that a good thing? Dot spots me and she comes bouncing over from the far side of the living room where she was standing behind a chair fondling the seated Joy . . . .

“What’s up?” Dot squeaks, waving her pink-nailed hands around like she’s a go- go dancer.

“What’s playing?” I ask, trying to be casual. “I know the song, but what band is this?”

“Three Dog Night. George always liked this record, it’s his. I feel kinda bummed about having killed him like that. I admit it. Call it a self-critique, like I’m a Red Guard hottie in pigtails at a girls-only Mao meeting. It was, like, out of all proportion to his crimes, even if he threw his first wife into a volcano.”

“What’s the record called?” Don’t even know why I asked that, but I felt I had to, and I’m completely ignoring Dot’s possibly racist “Red Guard hottie” line, not to mention her sudden bout of regret about the loss of her hubby, who’s about the last thing I wanna think about, him and his cock in a poncho.

“Suitable for Framing,” Dot says. “I think it was 1969. That was a fucking year, huh? Well, you weren’t born yet. It was a fucking year for your mother, I’m sure, and for me. And Miriam and Gina.”