Coyote blue

grub, dude," Yiffer said.
    Sam joined Calliope at the stove, where she was frantically biffing the grub. "I can't get the spaghetti to cook," she said, plunging a wooden spoon into a large saucepan from which the smoke was emanating. "The instructions said to boil for eight minutes, but as soon as it starts to boil the smoke comes out."
    Sam waved the smoke from the pan. "Aren't you supposed to cook the noodles separately?"
    "Not in the sauce?"
    Sam shook his head.
    "Whoops," Calliope said. "I'm not a very good cook. Sorry."
    "Well, maybe we can salvage something." Sam removed the pan from the heat and peered in at the bubbling black magma. "Then again, maybe starting over would be a good idea."
    He put the pan in the sink, where a trail of ants was invading a used bowl of cereal. Sam turned on the water and started to swivel the faucet to wash the intruders away when Calliope grabbed his hand.
    "No," she said. "They're okay."
    "They'll get into your food," Sam said.
    "I know. They've always been here. I call them my kitchen pals."
    "Kitchen pals?" Sam tried to adjust his thinking. She was right – you couldn't just wash your kitchen pals down the drain like they were ants. He felt like he'd been saved from committing genocide. "So, I guess we should start some more spaghetti?"
    "She only bought one box, dude," Yiffer said.
    "I guess we can eat salad and bread," Calliope said. "Excuse me." She kissed Sam on the cheek and walked out of the kitchen while he stared at the ghost of her bottom through the thin dress.
    "So, what do you do?" Yiffer asked with a toss of his head.
    "I'm an insurance broker. And you?"
    "I surf."
    "And?"
    "And what?" Yiffer said.
    Sam thought he could hear the sound of the ocean whistling through Yiffer's ears as if through a seashell. "Never mind," he said. He was distracted by the sound of a baby screaming in the next room.
    "That's Grubb," Yiffer said. "Sounds like he's pissed off."
    Unable to see the second b , Sam was confused. "I thought grub was biffed?"
    "No, Grubb is Calliope's rug-rat. Go on in and meet him. Nina's in there with J. Nigel Yiffworth, Esquire." Yiffer beamed with pride. "He's mine."
    "Your attorney?"
    "My son," Yiffer said indignantly.
    "Oh," Sam said. He resisted the urge to sit down on the floor and wait for his confusion to clear. Instead he walked into the living room, where he found Calliope sitting on an ancient sofa next to an attractive brunette who was breastfeeding an infant. The sofa was lumpy enough to have had a body sewed into it; stuffing spilled out of the arms where the victim had tried to escape. On the floor nearby, a somewhat older child was slung inside of a blue plastic donut on wheels, which he was gaily ramming into everything in the room. Sam gasped as the child ran a wheel up over his bare ankle on a kamikaze rush to destroy the coffee table.
    Calliope said, "Sam, this is Nina." Nina looked up and smiled. "And J. Nigel Yiffworth, Esquire." Nina pulled the baby from her breast long enough to puppet-master a nod of greeting from it, which Sam missed for some reason. "And that," Calliope continued, pointing to the drunk driver in the blue donut, "that's Grubb."
    "Your son?" Sam asked.
    She nodded. "He's just learning to walk."
    "Interesting name."
    "I named him after Jane Goodall's son. She let him grow up with baboons – very natural. I was going to name him Buddha, but I was afraid that when he got older if someone met him on the road they might kill him."
    "Right. Good thinking," Sam said, pretending that he had the slightest idea of what she was talking about and that he wasn't wondering in the least who or where Grubb's father was.
    "Nina moved in when we were both pregnant," Calliope said. "We were each other's Lamaze coaches. I was farther along, though."
    "What about Yiffer?"
    "Scum," Nina said.
    "He seems like a nice guy," Sam said, and Nina shot him an acid look. "As scum goes," he quickly added.
    "He only lives here sometimes," Calliope said. "Mostly when he doesn't have gas money for his van."
    Nina said, "We're having a yard sale day after tomorrow to raise some money to get him out of here. You might want to look at the stuff down in storage before the sale, pick up a bargain before it gets picked over."
    Yiffer entered the living room munching on a loaf of French bread. He stood next to Sam and thrust the bread under Sam's chin. "Bite?"
    "No, thanks," Sam said.
    "Yiffer!" Calliope said. "That bread was for all of us."
    "Truth,"