The Six Rules of Maybe

kind, goddamn , and I swear his eyes started pooling up, the way old man eyes did after so many years of life piling up. I got out of there. I got out of there, but still I could feel some urgent sense of my decisions following me. The decisions I had made, the decisions I was about to make.
    Later that afternoon, the big dark Mercedes pulled up in front of the Martinellis’ house. The realtor lady with realtor lady hair and realtor lady shoes came out and rather forcefully dug a hole into the ground in front of the Martinellis’ yard. She shoved the FOR SALE sign into it. I recognized her from all the calendars and magnets and notepads she’d sent in the mail over the years. Yvonne Yolanda, our Friend in the Real Estate Business.

Chapter Twenty
    I waited for the Mercedes to leave. The doorbell sounded far away in the Martinellis’ house. I looked into the glass by the door, waited until the bright flowers on Mrs. Martinelli’s dress appeared. I pounded on the door then. She needed to understand the urgency of this. The moment I saw that sign, I knew what was going on. They were not moving to Arizona or Florida or even Montana, where their daughter lived. They had not bought some condo in the sun to live out their days playing golf and sipping “highballs,” as Mr. Martinelli called the gin drinks he had every night at five thirty.
    “Mrs. Martinelli, open up,” I said.
    She peeked around the door. She wore her reading glasses on a chain around her neck; her dress was a large shouting garden of sunflowers.
    “Why, Scarlet,” she said. She sounded like some old lady on television, which is not how Mrs. Martinelli ever talked.
    “What have you done?” I said.
    “Whatever do you mean?” she said. “Come in, dear.” I rolled my eyes. Next she would be offering me Freshly Baked Cookies and telling me about The Good Old Days. It was the sweet old folks countermove. A cover-up.
    “You know what I mean. The FOR SALE sign. Getting rid of all of your stuff. Where is Mr. Martinelli?”
    I followed her into the kitchen. It looked empty, and so did the living room. Her collection of glass dogs that had lined the living room shelves was gone. So were the shelves themselves.
    “Ginger!” I said. Oh God, what had they done with her? I could just see the small white dog sitting in the passenger seat of Mr. Martinelli’s Buick, heading for the Great Pound in the Sky.
    “Don’t get your knickers in a twist; she’s right here.” Mrs. Martinelli whistled somewhere in the back of her teeth, and Ginger appeared, toenails clicking on the linoleum, her blank black eyes shiny behind her aging bimbo-fluff hair.
    I put my hand to my chest. “Thank God.”
    “Her kidneys are bad, but Mr. Martinelli said if we’d put him down when his kidneys got bad, it would have been years ago.”
    A tea kettle started to whine in high-pitched need. Mrs. Martinelli removed the kettle from the stove, opened a cupboard to reveal shelves vacant except for four lonely cups. She took two down, set them on the counter.
    “Cocoa?” she asked. She ripped open a package of Swiss Miss.
    “I knew it,” I said.
    “It has the little marshmallows,” she said.
    “They are scam artists, Mrs. Martinelli. I don’t know where you’re going, but you’re not going to find any cocoa plantation when you get there.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve talked to Morin Jude herself. We wouldn’t have just gone and sent that kind of money unless we knew she was a real person. They’re getting the house ready for us on the Ivory Coast. Herb has been reading up on cocoa. You would be surprised how involved it all is.” She poured steaming water into the cups. “The seed is actually green when ripe, not red. Isn’t that interesting?”
    “We’ve got to call someone and get your money back.” I looked around. The place was so empty, I’d have bet even the phone was gone.
    She opened a drawer, a mostly empty drawer, except for the accumulated bread crumbs and toothpicks still clinging for dear life to their old home. She took out a spoon, stirred the brown dust and unnaturally small white bits that were supposedly marshmallows.
    She handed me a cup, which I held but ignored. Mrs. Martinelli sipped. “An inferior product,” she said. Her top lip was spotted with dampened chocolate dust. Ginger still sat at her feet like one waiting slipper. She was apparently still hoping for food, the only thrill of her little day. I always thought it was